New Amazon Ad Mocks Apple’s iPad

Amazon’s just started broadcasting a fun new ad on television that mocks the high price of Apple’s popular iPad tablets. (That’s a screenshot at the top of this post, and you can watch the whole ad at youtube.com/Kindle .) It’s a simple ad — in fact, the narrator says just 40 words. But its message is unmistakeable…

This is the iPad with Retina display. And this is the new Kindle Fire HD with an 8.9-inch display. Stunning HD, stunning HD. In fact, you may not be able to tell the difference.

But your wallet definitely can.

It’s been fun to watch the reactions to Amazon’s ad around the web. “[I]t’s not beating around the bush this time,” jokes a technology blogger at Mashable. “The ad is a direct comparison with Apple’s iPad, claiming the two devices’ screens are virtually identical, while the price for the Kindle is much lower.” But in the comments to his post, some of his readers disagreed. ” OK, let’s compare the price of a BMX bike to that of a Corvette shall we?” wrote one. “If you’re looking to only read books, surf the web and watch movies, get a Kindle. If you want access to 10s of thousands of games and productivity tools including spreadsheet, presentation and Word-like apps, a camera, the ability to have video chat, movie editing, artistic and music creation apps as well as a large enough hard drive to handle all of those files. get an iPad…”

At a site called Mobile Mag, another blogger seemed to agree with that analysis, writing that that there are indeed more apps available for the iPad, it has a larger display, and its operating system is a lot more sophisticated. But even he seemed to enjoy the rivalry between the two top tablet makers. “Whether you are for the Kindle or against it, it is nice to see that someone is trying to take down the all-mighty Apple,” he writes.

But he added sardonically, “It’s a shame that we all can’t just be friends.”